Rudeness Pays Mighty Small Dividends

The quickest way to cut off a conversation with me is to say something angry, arrogant, condescending, or rude.  Do it to me and inwardly I wish I could be beamed up and gone. I don’t like it insinuated that I’m an idiot, or a jerk, or a (insert an expletive here).  I wish I could write that I am blameless, because I’m not, but I do believe I earnestly try to be socially graceful.

Almost every issue of the Baytown Sun will reveal a letter to the editor concerning politics and how stupid someone is. Occasionally my name is specifically mentioned as being “unpatriotic, stupid, idiotic, a dolt, a joke, or uninformed”. I marvel at all of this, as its apparent these fine citizens are zealous, passionate, and worked up enough to pound out a letter to the community to, what? Defend their political views with good solid non-accusatory facts? Not for the most part. What they write appears angry and condescending almost every time and we the readers, if we actually read it, feel like we were just slimed.

In their defense, they see themselves as righteous, witty, humorous, informed, educated, and as a spokesperson for their party’s dogmas. I wish I could report that is how other readers view them, but I can’t speak for anyone but me. Although I tend to agree with those who vote against the Democratic Party’s policies, I find both “sides” do not represent me in their “arguments”.

Quite a bit that is written in these exchanges are so offensive that if they were said face to face, it would be a downright physical confrontation. Calling me Mister and then telling me I’m a buffoon pretty much negates the fact that someone started the insult with a social title.  For instance, do I think Obama and Clinton are idiots?  No, not by a long shot. I think they are intelligent and extremely clever manipulators pushing a socialist brand of government I want to steer clear of.

They believe in giant government with hundreds of programs designed to even the playing field, so that those who were not motivated to get an education and a job can have everything you and I have who did our homework. And the working Middle Class gets to pay for it through increased taxes. This is no mean secret and yet, people who make 50 to a 100,000 dollars a year will vote for the very platform that will take food off their own table.

Do I think that people who will vote for Hillary are idiots?  Nope. I know too many good people who are educated and friendly who will punch her card on voting day. What I do find is they should understand for themselves how much they want the government nosing around in their personal lives. If they want more government, then vote for Hillary. I want less government and that is why I am voting for a political outsider over a hardcore political conservative who has more interest in the party lines, than in the people’s wishes. I think both party extremes do not represent me.

I’ve been clear about my stance on this for a long time and it throws me right in the middle of the Tea Party in some ways. To reiterate, I will pay my taxes and obey the laws and in exchange, I want our government to stay out of my life unless there is a disaster. Sure, it is a good thing that they work hard to keep our country defended against enemy both foreign and stateside. It should be a priority of our government to offer stimuli to keep jobs here and a great number of other programs that “offer” a solution, but when they cram something like healthcare down our throats, it gets stuck every time.

You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, right, so why do we feel it is socially acceptable to attack each other in print? Do we do this face to face with strangers because their political opinion differs from ours? I personally don’t carry a spare hockey mask around with me to protect my mouth from a violent reaction to my vitriolic political eruptions. What I do as a defense when I meet a person like this (or read what they wrote) is I avoid them. I have no interest in meeting them again or reading what they write in the letters to the editor section on page 4. Because of their sarcastic and acidic diatribe, I simply ignore them and in the occasional Facebook arena, I unfriend them.

As Kimberly “Sweet Brown” Wilkins so eloquently put it, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”